Game-theoretic models are natural frameworks to capture the adversarial and defensive interactions between players [1]}, [2]}, [3]}, [4]}, [5]}, [6]}, [7]}, [8]}, [9]}, [10]}. Game theory can provide a quantitative measure of the quality of protection with the concept of Nash equilibrium where both defender and an attacker seek optimal strategies, and no one has an incentive to deviate unilaterally from their equilibrium strategies despite their conflict for security objectives. The equilibrium concept also provides a quantitative prediction of the security outcomes of the scenario the game model captures. With the quantitative measures of security, game theory makes security manageable beyond the strong qualitative assurances of cryptographic protections. Extending this approach to mechanism design provides system designers freedom to shift the equilibrium and the predicted outcomes toward ones that are favored by the defender or the system designer via an elaborate design of the game structure.
